Moving house timeline: week by week

Moving badly and moving well involve almost identical amounts of work. The difference is sequencing — a handful of tasks have long lead times, and if they're started late everything downstream compresses into the final week alongside the packing.

The three that decide your move: broadband installation, removal firm availability, and time off work. All three are booked against someone else's calendar, and all three get harder the longer you wait.

Eight weeks before

Get three quotes rather than one, and get them in writing. Prices vary more than people expect for the same job, and the cheapest quote is often cheapest because it assumes fewer hours or fewer people than your move actually needs — ask what happens if it overruns. Moving house costs sets out what those quotes usually sit alongside.

Declutter now rather than later for a straightforwardly financial reason: you are about to pay someone to transport all of it. An afternoon spent deciding what isn't coming reduces the quote and the unpacking.

Six weeks before

If you're changing schools rather than just moving house, start earlier than this — admissions run to their own timetable and places at a specific school are not guaranteed by living nearby. Moving house with children covers the admissions timetable properly; if there's an animal in the house, moving house with pets has the microchip deadline and the two-week rule.

Four weeks before

This is the admin block, and it's the one that expands to fill whatever time you give it. Draft one address-change message and reuse it everywhere rather than composing each from scratch — our change of address checklist has a template you can copy.

Two weeks before

Confirm in writing, not by phone. A verbal confirmation is worth very little if a firm double-books, and this is exactly the point in the process where you have no slack to absorb that.

The final week

The essentials box sounds like a nice-to-have and is not. On the first night you will be tired, surrounded by identical boxes, and looking for the kettle, a phone charger, the toilet roll and something to sleep in. Pack them together and label the box unmistakably.

Moving day

Photograph every reading with the date visible. It takes ten seconds and settles almost every billing dispute that follows a move — and billing disputes after a move are common enough that you should assume you'll have one.

The fortnight after

These are the ones with legal weight — the DVLA items carry a fine of up to £1,000 — and they're also the ones most likely to be forgotten, because by this point you've moved and it feels finished. Put them in the calendar before moving day, not after. The DVLA change of address is two separate updates, and people routinely do only the first.

Exchange to completion: how short can the gap be?

The question that comes up most once a sale is nearly there — a buyer's solicitor has gone quiet, the completion date is a fortnight away, and nobody has exchanged yet. Two things are true at once. Exchanging and completing on the same day is possible and people do it. And it is the arrangement that leaves you paying removers and booking parking against a date that, until the moment of exchange, doesn't legally exist — so if the flaky party doesn't exchange, the money and the van are already committed.

The hard constraint isn't the law, it's the lender. A mortgage lender releases the money only after your conveyancer submits a Certificate of Title, and each lender sets its own notice period for that. Nationwide's information for lawyers asks for "at least five working days' notice of the completion/settlement date"; Skipton asks conveyancers to "allow seven business days' notice from submission of the Certificate of Title to completion", and says it will only release funds one business day before completion, with interest charged from the day it does. (Both read on the lenders' own conveyancer pages, 22 September 2026; check yours.) So "you need five days between exchange and completion" is a rule of thumb that is right for some lenders, short for others, and irrelevant if you're a cash buyer or only selling.

• Ask your conveyancer two questions, not one: which lender, and what notice that lender needs from the Certificate of Title. The answer sets your earliest safe completion date; the estate agent's preferred date doesn't.
• Don't exchange until the lender has confirmed funds for the date. Exchange binds you to complete; if the money isn't confirmed for that day, the penalty for failing to complete is yours.
• Aim for seven to twenty-eight days between exchange and completion — the same guidance the plan uses — and treat anything shorter as an exception you've chosen with the risks in front of you, not the default.
• Avoid a Friday completion where you can. It's the busiest day for removers and for the banking system, so funds that miss the cut-off can leave you without keys over a weekend.
• If the other side is slow, move the completion date, not the exchange. A week's slip on completion costs a rebooked van; exchanging on a date the lender can't fund costs far more.

Working to your own dates

The awkward part of any timeline written as "six weeks before" is that you have to keep converting it into real dates while thinking about other things. MovePlan does that conversion: you enter your move date, and every task above appears against the actual day it falls on, with tick-off progress that saves.

It also drafts 13 address-change letters filled in with your name, both addresses and your date — bank, insurer, both councils, the DVLA twice over for your licence and log book, TV Licensing, GP, dentist, optician, electoral roll, payroll and your subscriptions. £14.99 once, for six months.